I have prepared several jars with liquid mycelium, also to be able to observe and compare the growth a little. The liquid in jar number 3 is much cloudier than the other two jars. Is this an indication of contamination? The mycelium itself is actually no different to the mycelium in the other jars, overall the liquid in there just seems a little cloudier than in the other jars.
I think honey jars are not the best choice to propagate mycelium, much too big to fish enough mycelium out of the liquid with the needle/syringe, also the edge of the lid is too wide and thus takes away a lot of visibility when fishing for mycelium if you turn the jar upside down because the length of the needle is finite.
I am also wondering how long such a liquid mycelium actually grows before it spoils. The mycelium has now been in the
Incubation box at 26 degrees, is shaken up a little every few days.
It doesn't really make sense to me to want to propagate the liquid mycelium with a 20ml mycelium syringe, it is much faster afterwards
to propagate the grain spawn. But this will probably become topical again when I have harvested the first spores.
have now had my very first contamination in a brood jar. Over 20 jars are okay, 3 have already failed before - they were probably too damp and started to ferment. In any case, I couldn't detect any mold, and it smelled somehow like fermentation.
Oh dear
So far I have relied solely on the optics to check my mycelium jars for contamination.
While working in the Stiläir Box I somehow didn't realize that I was propagating co-contaminated mycelium.
Now far more than half of the grain spawn has been disposed of, at least I now know that healthy mycelium can be very reliably recognized by the smell of
contaminated mycelium. Healthy mycelium smells somehow pleasant - and the contaminated mycelium already dissolves.
Nausea if you sniff it too much.
Also quite good is the decision to work with several small jars instead of wanting to make equal mass, then
at least not everything is ruined straight away.
@Admin : Should probably have chosen "Mycelium Contaminated" as the thread title instead of "Liquid Mycelium Contaminated".
I believe that the topic can be dealt with quite well in such a small forum - perhaps more clearly.